1,851 Comments

Hi Martin
Love your emails, im on the hunt to start my career. As a 30 year old single mum with an 11 year old boy I was so desperate to work that I jumped into the first hob 10 years ago and have been a pa to the deputy headteacher in a high school now for 8 years. I don’t hate it but it’s not the career I am passionate about I love love love the idea of teaching g people to be healthy,learn about nutrition and share this with others but everywhere I turn I have to leave my job to do a degree. I don’t know whether to keep looking for jobs in a school that offer more money or take the leap but thought you may just have the answer. Any help would be very much appreciated
Kind regards
Hannah

Hannah, Thanks for sharing your story with us. I like that you have identified something you love to do; “teaching people to be healthy”. There are thousands of people who make a good living in this growing industry that do not have a degree.

University is big business. They have to make profit these days, so naturally they tell everyone they need their degree to get permission to do anything. Don’t be suckered.

In many ways you have taken the first and most difficult step; you have found your calling. Now you need to be flexible in your approach so that you can bring it into your reality.

I have been on something of a personal journey with People Maps over the past five years.
The enlightenment I got from Martin, particularly around the recruitment “industry ” has certainly helped me gain traction in my career.
However, Although I was able to get a better job, the “right job” has thus far eluded me.

I remember asking, Martin, from the depths of my despair in 2011, “please help me understand, what job should I be doing ?”
Hopefully, This latest release goes some way to addressing this big question.

I’m amongst many people in their middle age, looking for a new or second career.
Either because, like me, their first career no longer exists, or they were never in the right job in the first place.

I’m nearly 50 and still having to pedal quite hard, with a young family in tow.
Reading my personality profile and how it accurately describes the clashes of personality I have experienced, to the detriment of my job and family security, has certainly proved the value of Martin’s work.

To know oneself is to master oneself, and to change anything, we must first know ourselves.

As a “broad canvass, creative type” stuck in the hell of my 30 years in the wrong jobs, which had no use for my creativity, and I mean, over 20 jobs in 30 years, with only three jobs lasting 4 years, I have a desperate need to be doing the job of my dreams, not my past nightmares.
Martin has helped crystalize and clarify my situation, helping me focus on some ideas and objectives.
Valuable stuff.

Money is more important than anything elss , you are good at your iob. Do not leave and stick with your curent job if i were you. University is very important if you did earlier in life . But is not late do it slowly but do what you want in life .

Hi Martin
I have an phone that does not allow me to watch my feedback report for
The request on my career plans…how else can I get it…still for free though lol.
Thanks..hope to hear from you soon.
Annaline Clarke

You are so right that I need to consider what suits my personality! I studied a subject because it interested me but I didn’t give enough respect to the notion that the end job wasnt for me. It required me to ‘act upbeat’ ‘talk to people all day, everyday’. What was I thinking – no wonder I was unhappy having to adjust my personality to suit a job. I am not a ‘people’ person! Hope you can help me find a better fit.

I found the introductory content to be very relevant, and would like to access more. Martin talks about a failure in the recruitment process — what interests me is the parties that are involved in this failure. The way I see it:

1 Recruitment consultants: are out for instant matching-commission rewards. They fail (byandlarge) to understand their clients, and the candidates. This is particularly true of big recruitment agencies that adopt a ‘conveyor-belt’ mentality, and are eager to hit their flawed candidate registration targets.

2 Employers: are so busy and overwhelmed, that they prefer to out-source most of their recruitment to incompetent recruitment agencies. The larger employers (500+ employees) are compelled to invove a wide-array of stakeholders internally during recruitment: the hiring manager, the HR department, the budget holder, the operational management and so on and on. The substance of what they are looking for gets lost in the chain. Competency-based recruitment loses the flavour of the personality-types that are most relevant to the job.

3 Employees: cotinue to participate in the endless battle, hoping for a bit of luck to get them ahead. The ‘institutionalise’ their perception of the recruitment process, but rarely have sufficient leverage to stay in control.

I hope that Martin will help me to determine how to overcome this vicious circle of madness.

I didn’t watch the 3 Career Mistake videos Martin, because I expected a more interactive web session – like a quiz, followed by downloading a free e-book about the results of the quiz. Plus, at the Training Institute I am currently using, streaming video is restricted, because students have been using it to watch non-relevant videos (if you know what I mean 🙂

Having worked in the care field in many different roles from care assistant, manager, resident warden and housing warden for 35 years, my present job will be end and I will be made redundant by 31st March 2015. I love my present job as I love the challenge of working with different client groups. I am 51 so should I think about a completely new career or try to find another similar one?
I am hoping that through your course I will come to the right conclusion!
Thank you,
Christine

I am stuck in a job I don’t like and it’s becoming increasing difficult to cope with even going in. I want to do something about it but don’t know where to start. There are many difficulties: I have moved to a country where unemployment is a big problem and I am a single mum of a teenage boy (it’s not the best time to move again), however I think I am ’employable’. Where should I start?

Clearly you have to keep paying the bills but you should be working on your “escape plan”. I will show you how to do this in the 3 Step System. This is the difference between job hunting and career development. I will show you how to lay the groundwork to your new career. It the difference between farming and hunting with a sling. One requires a step by step process, the other requires a lot of luck.

Just to say that I’ve just finished Step 1 of the programme. There’s been a lot of soul searching on my part and I know that this is just the beginning of the process, but I feel so much more positive and confident now that I will get what works for me. Thank you for your support so far.

I was looking for psychometric testing for my younger cousin who is trying to decide on a career path when I found your site. I myself have been forced to find work as a teacher as I am unable to get any interviews in the field of Marketing for which I am qualified.

I was very interested in using your services as I find myself at a crossroads and unsure
how to proceed. I seem to be predisposed personality-wise to teaching from the feedback I get from parents and students, however I am not sure if it is the career for me. The same is true for Marketing as I have never had the opportunity to work in the field and as such, I am not sure it is the career for me.

I am 27 years old, so my interest now is to find what career I am best suited to succeed in and pursue it in anyway possible. I hope I am able to use your unique services to achieve my personal success as I am unsure in which direction to proceed.

May I wish you every success in this new launch. I’ve never found a hint of anything but well informed professionalism in everything you do. The support I’ve received from you when in difficult times and the non-quibble response to my concerns always guarantees you my respect and attention when contacted by you.

I think your aids to raising self-awareness and over-view of the industry of recruitment put many of us who listen to what you have to say at a serious competitive advantage over others who seek to rely on determination and self-criticism to get through; an approach which brought me to the edge of despair and made me easy prey to those seeking to exploit my resources for their own ends.

May I wish you continued success and satisfaction in your business and in providing real help to others.

Having been a full time Single Mum {widowed twice} of 6 kids in 8 years- for the past 22 years, I managed to get some training in a role as Sales Consultant. have now been made redundant as they moved offices to London…. searching for a way forward!!!!?

I’ve always thought I was ’employable’ but I have recently been applying for jobs and not even had a response back, either good or bad. Do agencies/employers not send out rejection letters anymore? I have a job that I love at the moment but need to look for something that pays more, I am applying for positions in the same industry that I have experience and skills for.. what am I doing wrong? I am 45 but this isn’t on my CV.. Help??

Anyone over the age of 35 is probably experiencing ageism. The good news is that there is a way around it. In the 3 step System I will show you how to get interviews, regardless of your age.

Don’t take it personally as it’s got nothing to do with your ability to do the job. It’s simply how the recruitment process deals with 100+ applications. It needs to throw 90 in the bin.

I also suspect you are changing careers, which brings it’s own problems. The combination of age and career change, means you need to approach job hunting very differently. The traditional recruitment process will work against you I’m afraid.

I’ve only just started on my course and feel very positive about it. What I have heard so far in the videos makes perfect sense, I think I am on the same page as you and on the basic level my thinking about job searching is along the same line as yours. I haven’t yet won the lottery so do need a job, but I really want the one that will work for me on many levels, not just as a source of income. I am pretty clear on what it is that I don’t want to have to put up with in my next job and I hope this is a reasonably good start… It was interesting to see that among the list of jobs I should avoid according to my Personality Report there are some that I would actually hate doing, so definitely not going for those 🙂 Looking forward to the rest of the 3 Steps course.

I’ve just come across a blog by John Hope Bryant, CEO of Operation HOPE. This is how it starts: “The secret in life to never getting tired is simple. Live your truth. When you’re doing what you’re passionate about you never actually get tired. You may be in need of serious rest on a regular basis, but you won’t get tired. Being tired is the pits. When you are tired, it’s actually a pretty sure sign you are on the wrong track. (…) And you are not excelling. You can’t. Because you don’t love it. You will only excel at what you love. (…)” How true is that…

I’ve had a quick read-through my full personality report and there is a lot to take in. In general, it sums me up quite well and it even made me laugh in places. A quote from the report about my ideal place of work: “it is important that their IT systems are fit for purpose. If you do not have suitable IT support systems you will be very frustrated”. You can’t imagine how many times I threatened to throw my work laptop out of the 1st floor window in my last job! I even asked my manager whether there was a time sheet code to book time lost due to IT failures. Didn’t get very far with that one. Seriously though, it looks like my idea of what I should/could/would like to do (or should never attempt to undertake) is not that far removed from what my report suggests, so I suppose it is a fairly good starting point. It will certainly take more than one reading, so more comments may follow.

Have just had an interview that was 100% behavioural questions. Luckily I had prepared for all such questions and thought I did OK without “drying up”. However I was told in the feedback I got one question “slightly wrong” (it was a question about time management but apparently in my answer the task I was describing was not delegated out to co-workers so I was marked down for team work, yet there were separate questions about team work!). As it was a public sector role I always wonder in these situations if there is a “hidden agenda”?